Get your MBA for Free Online (Ok, it's not a real MBA, but it is free.)

One of the most-sought degrees for improving earning power is the MBA. However, getting an MBA can be prohibitively expensive; attending even a not-so-glamorous B-school can quickly empty your coffers, so Josh Kaufman came up with a cheaper way to obtain the same knowledge: the PMBA.

The PMBA is the Personal MBA and to get it you just have to read business books -- a lot of them. Obviously, the cost of buying the books pales in comparison to the expense of attending business school. With the PMBA you won't get the cachet of the degree or benefit from a school's alumni network, but you will save money.

If even the cost of the PMBA books is too much for you (and the time involved reading them all sounds intimidating), then you can skimp even further and read free summaries of the many of the books in Kaufman's PMBA series. Olivier Roland decided to read "52 of the best business books in 52 weeks" and then summarize those books, which he selected from the PMBA reading list, on his blog, Books That Can Change Your Life. You can read Roland's rationale for this project and access his book summaries by going to his Books That Can Change Your Life blog and reading the article My crazy project: Read 52 of the best business books in 52 weeks, and post a weekly review here on my blog.